Licence To Kill
Licence To Kill is not only my favourite Bond movie of the 1980's, it's one of the best Bond films of recent years, and harkened back to the 'It could actually happen' style of From Russia with Love.
The film boasts an engrossing and tightly scripted screenplay, an exceptional cast (Benicio Del Toro is a great henchman) a great Michael Kamen score with a brilliant Gladys Knight theme song and several excellent action set pieces. Licence To Kill is notable on several other levels. For one, it represents the last appearances in the series of Robert Brown's M and Caroline Bliss's Moneypenny. It would also be John Glen's final Bond film. No one has directed as many 007 films as Glenn.
Timothy Dalton's second and ultimately last appearances James Bond was one of the most controversial films of the series. Determined to make 007 a more realistic, down-to-earth hero, the screenwriters create a storyline sending Bond on a mission of revenge. Virtually everyone agreed that this was a superior thriller but for many fans it simply wasn't 'Bond' enough. The gang is back (Bond, M, Q, Moneypenny and for once an actor reprises his role as Felix Lighter) the Bond girls were gorgeous, he bedded both of them, the locations were certainly exotic and there was some great stunts, but gone were the extravagant sets and the villain (a brilliant Robert Davi) was for many, was all to believable drug baron instead of a power crazy megalomaniac.
Sadly, the films legacy is not a happy one. At the time MGM/UA was under the control of a controversial chairman whose lack of film marketing experience was legendary. Thus, in the USA, it opened against fierce competition at the box office (Batman, Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2, not to mention Back To The Future 2) and backed by an awful advertising campaign, with horrid cut-and-paste photo shop posters, the movie only grossed $34 million at the domestic box office, to end the year as the 36th highest grossing movie of 1989. Worldwide figures make for better reading. $156 million. Interestingly on a documentary on the dvd, Glen says the budget for the movies had not risen since Moonraker 10 years earlier, and Cubby Broccoli told him "If we don't film it in Mexico (to keep costs down) we aren't making the movie".
It would be 6 years before we seen 007 again. Timothy Dalton's tenure as Bond was brief but impressive. It can be said that the Dalton era truly restored James Bond to a serious action figure and his contribution to the series cannot be overstated.
Licence To Kill is not only my favourite Bond movie of the 1980's, it's one of the best Bond films of recent years, and harkened back to the 'It could actually happen' style of From Russia with Love.
The film boasts an engrossing and tightly scripted screenplay, an exceptional cast (Benicio Del Toro is a great henchman) a great Michael Kamen score with a brilliant Gladys Knight theme song and several excellent action set pieces. Licence To Kill is notable on several other levels. For one, it represents the last appearances in the series of Robert Brown's M and Caroline Bliss's Moneypenny. It would also be John Glen's final Bond film. No one has directed as many 007 films as Glenn.
Timothy Dalton's second and ultimately last appearances James Bond was one of the most controversial films of the series. Determined to make 007 a more realistic, down-to-earth hero, the screenwriters create a storyline sending Bond on a mission of revenge. Virtually everyone agreed that this was a superior thriller but for many fans it simply wasn't 'Bond' enough. The gang is back (Bond, M, Q, Moneypenny and for once an actor reprises his role as Felix Lighter) the Bond girls were gorgeous, he bedded both of them, the locations were certainly exotic and there was some great stunts, but gone were the extravagant sets and the villain (a brilliant Robert Davi) was for many, was all to believable drug baron instead of a power crazy megalomaniac.
Sadly, the films legacy is not a happy one. At the time MGM/UA was under the control of a controversial chairman whose lack of film marketing experience was legendary. Thus, in the USA, it opened against fierce competition at the box office (Batman, Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2, not to mention Back To The Future 2) and backed by an awful advertising campaign, with horrid cut-and-paste photo shop posters, the movie only grossed $34 million at the domestic box office, to end the year as the 36th highest grossing movie of 1989. Worldwide figures make for better reading. $156 million. Interestingly on a documentary on the dvd, Glen says the budget for the movies had not risen since Moonraker 10 years earlier, and Cubby Broccoli told him "If we don't film it in Mexico (to keep costs down) we aren't making the movie".
It would be 6 years before we seen 007 again. Timothy Dalton's tenure as Bond was brief but impressive. It can be said that the Dalton era truly restored James Bond to a serious action figure and his contribution to the series cannot be overstated.